How to Help Your New Hires Settle In Fast

“Each new employee brings with them a potential to achieve and succeed. To lose the energy of a new hire through poor onboarding is an opportunity lost.” – Sarah Wetzel

While teaching new employees how to perform their new role should be a high priority, you might be shooting yourself in the foot if you haven’t gone through a comprehensive induction. That’s because research has shown that by following a systematic onboarding process, new employees can be brought up to speed 50% faster than if you didn’t - and proceed to perform far better going forward.

It’s a real issue: According to a Gallup poll, a staggering 88% of employees indicated dissatisfaction with their companies’ onboarding programs.

So what exactly do we mean when we say ‘systematic onboarding’? Simply put: Think further than getting your new employees their sign-in details and workstation set up.

Plan Ahead

Make the best use of the time between your new employee signing their contract and their start date. If new hires can already see that they will be well supported in their new role before they’ve even had their first day, they’ll be feeling much more at ease when they arrive on day one.

Why not compile an employee handbook to send to them ahead of their first day? You can let them know what to expect, have a schedule in place in terms of who they will meet and which departments they will visit, and an overview of key stakeholders so that they can put faces to names when they arrive.

Be prepared

Just because you’ve found the right person for the job doesn’t mean your efforts should stop there. It’s vital that you continue to make a good impression on your employee’s first day and throughout their time at your company.

Ensure that all other employees know that a new hire is starting and how they can make their transition easier. It is also essential that everything is ready for your new employee’s arrival. There is nothing worse than arriving for your first day and not having the relevant paperwork from HR, the equipment that you need, and the ability to log in to the software that you’ll be using – so make sure that that, at the very least, is ready!

Provide guidance

Early on in the onboarding process, discuss what is expected of your new employee and the timeline for which these expectations are to be met. 

Once your new employee knows what they need to do, it’s essential to teach them how to accomplish it and what positive outcomes achieving these goals has on the company. Knowing the reason for doing what they do and the effect they can have will motivate your employees to get the tasks done.

Perhaps the most critical aspect of onboarding is ensuring that your new hire feels that they are part of the team. By incorporating all of these aspects into your onboarding process and successfully integrating your new employee into the company, you’re on the right path to boosting productivity and increasing employee retention (effective onboarding has been found to improve talent retention by as much as 82 percent).

The perks are that your new employee will be contributing to your business from day one and providing a good return on investment the more embedded they become in your company’s culture.

“You can have the best strategy and the best building in the world, but if you don’t have the hearts and minds of the people who work with you, none of it comes to life.” – Renee West